hello and welcome back to the Todoist Channel my name is Naomi and in today's video we are going to talk about what I personally believe to be probably the most important productivity habit and that is the weekly review seriously I believe that pretty much everyone could benefit from a weekly review and don't be fooled into thinking that a weekly review is just about looking back it's very much also about looking forward if you've never heard of a before the weekly review was actually created by productivity consultant David Allen as part of his getting things done method there are three distinct sections to the weekly review and they are get clear process all of your Loose Ends get current make sure everything is up to date and get creative so come up with new ideas to improve how you live and work also if you make it to the end of this video you could be in with chance to win a free year of Todoist Pro now you might wonder why should you include a weekly review as part of your routine isn't it just creating more work for yourself but actually there are so many benefits to having a weekly review it can help you get an objective view of your week ahead it can help you clarify your thinking spot patterns it's really good for helping with decision- making as well also for me personally it is the profound sense of peace I have in knowing that I have a game plan for each of the days of my week ahead basically a weekly review just provides you with clarity and Direction which are two things that are very often missing whenever we go into reactive mode so who should be doing a weekly review I said it at the top I think everybody should but it is particularly helpful for you if any of these apply you usually start the week without a plan and you just wing it you feel busy but you haven't made any real progress towards your goals you feel like you're always in a reactive mode dealing with other people's requests and putting out fires or seriously just everybody and anybody basically if you've got a heart beat and you're trying to adult do a weekly review the beauty of a weekly review is you don't have to adopt a new productivity method it can fit seamlessly in with time blocking pomodoros okrs we have videos on all of those I will link them in the description box below but as with everything that we give as advice on this channel take it and make it your own it is highly customizable a weekly review should be something that reflects you personally what's important to you what your life looks like what your schedule looks like everyone's different and it's really crucial that you make your weekly review work for your life so how do you complete a weekly review well first things first set yourself up for Success if you choose a consistent time and a consistent place to do your weekly review it is more likely that you're going to stick to it because consistency is going to help you keep going when motivation won't I really think the key to this is to choose a time that really does work best for you and your schedule but then also choose a place that is enjoyable it's somewhere that you want to be some people do it from their desk on a Friday afternoon and that's totally fine but if you link it with something that you look forward to say maybe you're favorite coffee from your favorite coffee shop then you're maybe a little bit more likely to want to go and keep up with that routine now in terms of time choose what works for your schedule not everybody's week starts on a Monday and so for some people doing it on a Wednesday might be best or maybe it's a Friday afternoon at work maybe it's a Sunday morning that's when I tend to do mine but whatever fits best into your life and your schedule pick that time and stick with it I actually used to split my weekly review so I would do my work weekly review on a Friday afternoon and my home weekly review or personal weekly review on a Sunday morning and it felt a little bit like Overkill and then since we've actually introduced team workspaces into Todoist where you can collaborate with your team and do all of your project planning in there I now don't really need to split it anymore so I just do one weekly review on a Sunday and I can look at my personal tasks and my team tasks all in the one tool and that has actually given me more of a holistic view of my week to be honest so I just now do it on a Sunday morning I love my weekly review you can probably tell from the enthusiasm in this video for weekly reviews I sit down on a Sunday morning my kids I make sure they're occupied with some kind of activity or let's be honest a screen and I will sit down I will have my calendar I will have everything that I need in front of my notebooks my todoist my email inbox all my stuff I make a nice hot drink and I usually have a pastry and I spend an hour and it feels really actually like me time it feels like time dedicated to my future sanity for the week so I relish it and yeah I'm not giving it up for anything we would recommend around an hour for this for some people it's going to be less and for some people it's going to be more but there are 168 hours in the week and so dedicating 1 hour means that you're optimizing your other 167 which feels like a bargain get clear start by thinking of paper items physical things that you could put in an inbox I actually have a metal inbox tray it lives in my dining room that's where everything goes receipts School permission slips random things that come in the mail anything that's paper goes in that in tray and then on a Sunday morning it gets processed then think about your other inboxes that could be your text messages social media messages emails uh if you have like a work task management system for us that's Todoist anything that has an inbox or where there's pending items that should get processed as well so that means clearing everything out making tasks for anything that you need to tackle filing in anything that you don't and then my favorite part of getting clear is emptying your head I know some of my colleagues will just open up their Todoist inbox and just dump in all of the tasks that they have rattling around in their brain for me personally I like to handwrite it so I get just an A4 sheet of paper lined and I just make a list big old massive list of everything that's on my mind then I transfer that into Todoist my reasoning behind that is that some of it's absolute nonsense that doesn't actually need to be actioned and it's just you know taking off space in my mind and then some of it is are things that need to be actioned and they go into Todoist get current once you've got your list of everything that you need to do take a look at your next actions is there anything that you need to tackle in the upcoming week take a look back over your calendar now this one is a little bit strange because you'd think that looking back isn't going to really help you with planning forward but actually when you look at your calendar and you see all the things that you've done over the last 2 to 3 weeks you'll maybe remember a doctor's appointment that needs followed up or something in there that needs paid or you know there's a lot of little triggers that lie in your calendar that can help you form what's coming up this week or what you need to do this week and then take a look at your upcoming calendar do you have things in there that you've completely forgotten about do you need to do anything for those things that you may have completely forgotten about like a birthday party or a work meeting is there something there that needs your attention if you have a waiting for list now is a good time to review that a waiting for list is basically a list of things that you're waiting for so it could be correspondence from a colleague or it could even be something as simple as something you ordered online that hasn't been delivered yet review your projects list so whether you've got an actual list of all of your projects into Todoist or not we all have projects on the go a work project that you're really focusing on at the moment it could be getting your garden ready for spring it could be some renovation work it could even be a project that you're doing with your kids take a look through all of these things and note any next actions that you could have coming up this week it's also a good time to dedicate some next actions to things that you really want to drive forward review any other relevant checklists that you have you may already have or you may want to create checklist for things that are important to you that could be say a financial planning checklist keep you on top of your financial goals it could be a list of the people that matter most to you and you want to go through that list and make sure that you've reached out to them or help them in some way I have one of those and I find really helpful it stops me from letting people slide too far down my messages get creative review your someday maybe list if you don't have one of these I highly highly recommend one it is basically a list of the things that you can't get to right now but you would like to do someday maybe these could be business ideas vacation plans books to read places to visit people to see hobbies to pick up anything that you know you can't get to right now but you do want to keep on your mind put it in your someday maybe list and then when you're doing your weekly review and you get to this list you can take a look through it and figure out if any of these things can happen today or this week creative and courageous basically as you wrap up your weekly review this is your chance to really think about your dreams think about your dreams your goals things that you really want to pursue in your life and it helps you think about these things not just as big aspirational things but also something that can be broken down and put into your weekly review so that you can stand a chance at actually making it a reality reflect and plan this is an opportunity to ask yourself some juicy questions for what happened the week before and how you want the next week to go these could be questions like what patterns am I seeing in my working behavior what did I accomplish last week was there anybody that I should have reached out to that I didn't the nature of these questions is to just get you to reflect on what went right and what went wrong in the week previous so that you have a chance to do better in the week coming up and then when you've got all of this information in front of you which seems like a lot but actually it's not that much whenever you get into the practice of it your priorities tend to float to the surface and then you know exactly what you need to be focusing on for the week ahead now you might be thinking Naomi that was a lot of information where do I even start with all of this well we actually have a Todoist template that is a getting things done weekly review template download it cut it to pieces and make your own that's exactly what I did with mine but it is a great starting point because there are so many prompts in there that are going to get your brain ticking over and I will leave you with this quote from David Allen's Getting Things Done the weekly review is the critical success factor for marrying your larger commitments to your day-to-day activities and then this from us a weekly review is going to give you 52 opportunities in the year for Fresh Start it's going to give you 52 opportunities to improve on what happened the week before and it's going to give you 52 opportunities to learn a little bit more about yourself and how you work so if I haven't convinced you by now then I don't know what to tell you and if you would like that opportunity to win a year of free Todoist Pro then all you need to do is comment in the comment section below we want to hear do you do a weekly review what's included in your weekly review if you don't do a weekly review would you consider it after this video and that's us for today thank you so much for watching and if you like you can give us a thumbs up you can subscribe to the channel you could leave us a comment all of these things are massively helpful and massively appreciated and on that note I will see you in the next one bye you can still hear me oh wow they are very dirty glasses objectify no there so many benefits to having a weekly can't just can never say the word productivity Hello Kitty Cat conclude conclude